Alan Arrivée is a filmmaker, writer, and artist. He is Associate Professor of Film and head of the BFA in Thearte Arts, emphasis in Film Production program in the Department of Theatre & Film at The University of Mississippi. His short film SILENT RADIO was awarded Best Foreign Film at The European Independent Film Festival 2007 in Paris, and his short THE ORIGINAL I.Q. TESTER received the Founder's Choice Award at the 2015 Queens World Film Festival. His short play THE ORIGINAL I.Q.TESTER was a finalist for the 2007 Heideman Award and was published in The Tusculum Review.

Micah-Shane Brewer is a director, actor, musical director, and vocalist.As an actor, Micah-Shane has appeared in diverse works like Doubt (Father Flynn), Sweeney Todd (Tobias), Spamalot (Sir Robin), Sunday in the Park with George (George), A Christmas Carol (Bob Cratchit), Our Country’s Good (Sideway/Collins), The Full Monty (Malcolm), Cats (Munkustrap), Our Town (Stage Manager), Three Days of Rain (Walker/Ned) and more. As a director, he was the Founding Artistic Director of Encore Theatrical Company in East Tennessee and has directed for other professional theatres in the region.

Donna Buckley recently completed her MFA in Costume Design, at Wayne State University’s Hilberry Repertory Theatre in Detroit Michigan and her BA from Oakland University in Rochester Michigan. Ms. Buckley has recently worked at the Utah Shakespeare Festival and has also worked in film. She was the credited renaissance costume designer for the film All’s Faire in Love, and worked on Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, constructing clothing for the principle actors.

An actor trainer, director, and playwright, Joe is head of the acting program and is a teacher of acting, directing, and playwriting. His teaching expertise is in acting process, acting styles, and voice. For ten years, Joe was artistic director of Oxford Shakespeare Festival (OSF), a summer theatre on the Ole Miss campus. His professional playwriting credits include several productions throughout the country of his play Rock and Betty Dance, winner of a Rockefeller playwriting grant award. His play American Cowgirls performed at a theatre festival in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria.

Yi-Tai Chung is an artist working with light. Chung has designed lighting for classical and new plays, musicals, opera, dance, and commercial events throughout Taiwan and the United States for ten years. Momentum, his recent dance lighting design presented by Dance Repertory Theatre, won the Austin Critics Table Award for Best Dance Ensemble in 2017. His previous lighting design at the Butler Opera Center for the opera Dialogues of the Carmelites was selected for the World Stage Design 2017 Exhibition.

Dex holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Mississippi and has spent the last 15 years designing and directing nationally and internationally. During six years as resident designer at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, his designs won the Critics Choice Award three years in a row. Regionally, he has designed for theatres such as Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Merrimack Repertory Theatre, Portland Centre Stage and the Sacramento Theatre Company.

Carey Hanson received a Master of Fine Arts degree in costume design from Utah State University. Her costume experience has covered a wide range of theatre, dance, opera, musical theatre, and theatre for youth. Carey has worked professionally with The Santa Fe Opera, Utah Opera, Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre, Unicorn Children’s Theatre, Sundance Summer Theatre, Old Lyric Repertory Company, The Harper Joy Theatre, and Playmill Theatre-Jackson. Her most recent designs include The Elephant Man, Oedipus the King, Urinetown, Hair, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Six Characters in Search of an Author.

A Dallas-born Cherokee filmmaker, Sarah grew up on-set and backstage, and has been involved in the arts ever since. Her directorial work has been seen in festivals such as LA SkinsFest and the Green Bay Film Festival. Outside of writing and directing her own films, she focuses on documentary and narrative cinematography, with work recently shown at the Austin Film Festival, the Texas Filmmaker's Showcase, and seen on PBS. She has taught courses in color correction for Austin Film Society, and undergraduate Editing at the University of Texas Austin.

Rhona Justice-Malloy is a professor of theatre. The College of Liberal Arts recently acknowledged her work with the Research, Scholarship and Creative Achievement Award. She is a Fellow of the Mid-America Theatre Conference and a Fellow of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies. She is a member of the National Theatre Conference, the League of Professional Theatre Women, the Women’s Playwrights’ Initiative and Actors Equity. Her ongoing research is focused on the African American newspapers, The IndianapolisFreeman and The Chicago Defender...

Rory Ledbetter is Associate Professor of Voice, Speech, and Acting in the Theatre & Film Department. He received his MFA in Theatre Directing from Florida State University in 2004. He is a certified Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework® and has extensive training in the Linklater Voice Progression, Knight-Thompson Speech Work, and Patsy Rodenburg's voice methodologies. Rory has studied Clowning with Chris Bayes, Avner the Eccentric, and Elizabeth Baron.

Paul Marszalkowski is a music director, vocal coach, pianist, composer, and arranger hailing from Buffalo, New York. He holds a Master's degree in Musical Theatre from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow and a Bachelor's in Music Education from SUNY Fredonia.Paul has worked as the Resident Music Director at PCPA - Pacific Conservatory Theatre, where he led many productions including the west coast premieres of Newsies and Disney's Freaky Friday, as well as working with composer Brad Carroll on a revised version of his musical Lend Me a Tenor.

Jennifer Mizenko is a Professor of Movement for the Actor and Dance at the University of Mississippi, where she has run the Theater Department's dance program since 1989 and the movement program since 1996. Jennifer's duties include teaching jazz and modern technique classes, plus dance composition, dance appreciation, movement for the actor, and directing the university dance company, Mississippi: The Dance Company. Throughout her tenure at Ole Miss, Jennifer has continually enhanced her skills as a movement instructor.

René Pulliam- Associate Professor of Theatre Arts
Since 1993, René Pulliam has been head of the BFA program in Musical Theatre at the University of Mississippi. She received her BA in Music from Whittier College in 1972 and her MFA in Dance/Choreography from Mills College in 1992. She has directed and/or choreographed hundreds of musicals across the United States, including the West Coast premieres of Smile, Closer than Ever, and Over Here. She has been awarded the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Award for her choreography on No, No Nanette and Good News.

Matthew Shifflett is a theatre historian and writer who has worked professionally as a playwright, a dramaturg, and an actor. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland--College Park. He has previously taught at Georgetown University and Montgomery College and has led acting workshops at Shepherd University. He is a member of the American Society for Theatre Research, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, and the American Theatre and Drama Society.

Jared, a native of the Mississippi Delta, is a designer and sculptor who received his MFA in Theatre Design from the University of Mississippi in 2005. Jared was a co-recipient of the Mississippi Governor’s Award For Excellence in the Arts in 2002. In 2010, Jared received a special achievement award from The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters for his work on The Passions of Walter Anderson: A Dramatic Celebration of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Artist.

In addition to being an award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Harrison Witt brings more than 20 years of professional production experience in cinematography and lighting to the Department of Theatre & Film at Ole Miss. Logging thousands of hours on set with directors like Richard Linklater, Quentin Tarantino, Terrence Malick, Spike Lee and Robert Rodriguez has been invaluable to Harrison’s development as a filmmaker and teacher.
Similarly, learning camera and lighting techniques while working side by side with cinematographers like Roger Deakins, Emmanuel Lubezki, and Pawel Edelman...

Dr. Wood is deeply invested in understanding how the stories people tell themselves--through drama, film, performance, and history--affect human behavior and thought. His research focuses on cross-cultural avant-garde, cognitive science, popular culture, and gender within the US, Europe, and Japan during the 20th and 21st centuries. He has presented work on the shared corporeal topography of Butoh dance and live zombie performances and the cognitive effects of certain kinds of dramatic language and his publications include works on gender representation in theatre (Into the Woods) and film (Aliens), as well as performance and book reviews.

Adjunct Faculty

Roxie Thomas Clayton- Adjunct Professor of Dance

Roxie Thomas Clayton is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre from the University of Mississippi, where she was one of six dancers chosen for the Dwight Rhoden Choreography Project, which was then showcased at the Kennedy Center. While attending school Roxie was extremely active in Mississippi: The Dance Company, where she was a featured soloist and choreographer. Roxie completed her Master of Arts in Dance at Shenandoah University, where she studied with Alan Arnett, Ting-Yu Chen , Maurice Fraga, Kim Gibilisco, Elijah Gibson, Erica Helm, and Linda Miller.

Dan Stearns is Adjunct Professor of Theatre Arts in the Department of Theatre and Film. In 2009 he received his MFA from the Shakespeare Theatre's Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University. He holds two degrees from the University of Chicago where he was also a Lecturer in both Humanities and Theatre and Performance Studies, as well as production manager of University Theater. While living in Chicago he worked at the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and others. His on-camera experience includes television, commercials, industrial film, independent film, and new media.

Matthew R. Wilson serves as Assistant Professor of Performance at the University of Mississippi and works around the world as a professional actor, director, fight director, scholar, and theatre instructor. He is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association, Screen Actors' Guild / American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, Society of American Fight Directors, and Association of Theatre Movement Educators. He is a three-time Helen Hayes Award nominee and has taught internationally, including serving as a Guest Artist/Instructor at NYU, Columbia, Northwestern, and Georgetown.

Production Staff

Jeffrey Hannah- Master Electrician

Jeffrey Hannah is pleased to be joining the staff of Ole Miss in the position of Master Electrician. Originally from Troy, Michigan, Jeffrey holds an MFA in Lighting Design from the University of Illinois, as well as a BA in Theatre Performance from Oakland University, additionally he has completed internships at the Ozark Actors Theatre and Jeff Daniels’ Purple Rose Theatre Company.

Jonathan Lee is a 2011 graduate from The University of Southern Mississippi with a BFA in
Theatre Design & Technology. Design credits include The Learned Ladies and Snakebit at USM,Comedy of Errors, Distracted, Rent, Time Stands Still, Urinetown, and Hairspray at the
University of Mississippi, and God of Carnage, Retreat from Moscow, and Pete 'n' Keeley at New
Harmony Theatre.